A few years ago, TV makers tried to outdo one another at the annual Consumer Electronics Show with the biggest, thinnest HDTV. That’s not the case anymore. Actually, TVs weren’t too exciting this year as the Ultra HD or 4K TVs continued to be the main product.

But Sony did have a super skinny one, the Sony XBR X900C Series 4K Ultra HD TV, at just 4.9 millimeters at its thinnest. How thin is that? When you look at it sideways, it disappears. No really! Check out the video above.

USB? Meh. Too slow. Plus you need a cable to transfer large files between devices. Ethernet or Wi-Fi suffer from similar issues of either being slow and spotty or requiring cables. There’s also the sneaker method of transferring large files — if you happen to have a USB stick or portable drive lying around.

But a new technology called Kiss Connectivity developed by Keyssa may be the answer for mobile devices everywhere. Kiss relies on EHF waves, or Extremely High Frequencies, to transfer data. Devices have to be very close together, kind of like Near Field Communication technology. Kiss touts transfer speeds of up to 6 Gigabits per second (USB 3.0 is around 5 Gbps).

Marie von Tatenhove, Keyssa’s vice president of marketing, demoed Kiss by transferring a 1.8 GB movie to a laptop in about 6 seconds. In the video, you can see a special pad on the laptop that has the tiny Kiss solid-state chip. Her phone also has a Kiss case. As soon as the technologies touch, the phone’s storage pops up onscreen and she moves the movie to the desktop.

It’s fast but probably more attractive is the convenience. Imagine just setting your phone on top of a TV to immediately view large videos from your phone — without any buffering.

Marie van Tatenhove demonstrates how transferring a 1.8 GB movie from her phone to the computer takes 6 seconds. Speeds top around 328 MBps, or 1.8 to 2.6 gbps.

Keyssa expects the first Kiss products in the consumer market in the second half of 2015.

For anyone keeping track, improved speeds for transfer technologies are on their way:

TransferJet — Another close-proximity transfer (ie: wireless) that is currently at 560 Mbps. The TransferJet Consortium is working on a 10 Gbps process, which is currently in draft mode. TransferJet technology is backed by Toshiba, Olympus and Sony.

Thunderbolt – Used by Apple Macbooks, Thunderbolt (now in version 2) offers transfer rates of up to 20 Gbps. Thunderbolt 3, with speeds topping out at 40 Gbps, is expected later this year or next year. Requires a cable.

The Motorola Scout 5000 from Binatone has GPS, Wi-Fi and an HD video camera.

Pets are obviously near and dear to people everywhere and tech developers hope to keep it that way. Several companies offered tracking collars and other devices for pets, though at CES this week, I saw more stuffed dogs than real ones.

Motorola has an extensive line of pet trackers and systems, including the Scout5000, pictured above. This collar has built-in Wi-Fi to interact with smartphones. Plus, it has a wide-angle HD video camera to see what your dog is seeing. There’s also bark detection to notify owners when Fido is excited and the collar has a speaker so you can talk to your dog when you’re nowhere near. The Scout 5000 should land in the U.S. around June for about $200.

The redesigned Tagg pet tracker adds a temperature sensor and is waterproof.

Tagg, one of the early pet trackers originally developed by Qualcomm, redesigned its dog collar and mobile app. The Tagg GPS Plus is completely waterproof and senses temperature so it’ll alert you if your puppy is getting too warm — or cool. In 2013, Qualcomm sold a majority stake to a private equity firm but the San Diego chipmaker is still an investor. To date, Tagg tells me it’s sold more than 100,000 collars. The new Tagg GPS Plus is available for pre-order for $99 (a price that jumps to $120 later) and requires a monthly fee of about $8 a month.

The Whistle pet activity tracker doesn’t have GPS but uses Wi-Fi to send activity data to an owner’s smartphone.

Whistle is a pet activity tracker that uses Wi-Fi to share information back to a smartphone app. Did he get enough exercise? Did she rest? It’s all in the tracker. It’s also $99. More details are on Whistle’s site.

Casio’s Exilim camera attaches to a dog collar to capture video from a dog’s perspective.

Casio’s Exilim FR10 camera is not a pet tracker. It’s a camera that can be detached from its LCD screen and attached to dog collars, mounted on helmets and many other things. The two separate pieces communicate via Bluetooth.

This certainly wasn’t all the stuffed dogs at CES. But a few I snapped photos and grabbed some information about. Maybe next year, Boulder-based WUF, which successfully wrapped up its Kickstarter campaign last month, will be at CES.

Stick EDYN’s plant sensor in the garden to track temperature, lighting, soil moisture and humidity and figure out if you have the best growing conditions for your plants. The valve attaches to sprinkler systems and garden hoses to help control watering.

For the novice gardener who prefers help from technology, garden sensors are tools that help you learn more about the soil your plants live in. It can help you learn if you’re overwatering or if the plants aren’t getting enough sun. We’ve seen these before, most notably Parrot’s Flower Power, but one issue has been the inconvenience of relying on batteries.

The new EDYN garden sensor adds solar power so you don’t have to worry about swapping out batteries. And like other sensors, EDYN tracks temperature, light, soil moisture and humidity. And it communicates with a home’s Wi-Fi system to send details to a mobile app.

EDYN is taking sensors a step further and is also offering a watering valve to attach to above-ground sprinklers, drip systems and hoses. You’ll be able to control your watering system from a mobile app and, if necessary, turn off watering manually if there’s a sudden downpour and the garden doesn’t need extra water.

The garden sensor will be available at stores like Home Depot in the spring for $99. The valve is $60. More details about preordering on EDYN’s site.

Parrot, meanwhile, announced the Parrot Pot, which is similar to its Flower Power sensor but this is an actual pot that communicates with your home network to tell you about the health of plants in containers. It has a water reservoir that will slowly water the plant for a month.

One thing that’s hard to give up for those canceling expensive pay-TV service is the DVR, especially if you’re a sports fan.

One of the newer brands to offer DVRs to cord cutters is Tablo, which has a series of boxes with a low monthly service fee. At the Consumer Electronics Show, Tablo introduced its newest DVR, the Tablo Metro, which has two tuners so you can record two shows at the same time. Plus, it has a built-in antenna to better capture those over-the-air channels like Fox, ABC and CBS.

The Tablo Metro is aimed at people who live in metropolitan areas and can easily grab broadcast TV signals without having to put an antenna on the roof.

Inside the Tablo Metro DVR is a built-in antenna (the raised lines that look like star patterns).

The Tablo Metro DVR is $250. To access Tablo’s program guide, so you can schedule the recording of future shows, the service is $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year. Tablo also offers a “lifetime” subscription of $150 on the box. You can pre-order the Metro now. It ships in March.

For all Tablo options, you’ll need a hard drive, Internet and an HDTV antenna (except for the Metro).

Another alternative for people who have canceled their pay-TV service is TiVo. Remember TiVo? The original personal digital recorder is still around. And it offers a DVR for people with just an antenna on their TV. Its TiVo Roamio is $50 for the box and service is $14.99 a month. Not a bad price for the box, which records up to 4 shows simultaneously on its 500 GB hard drive. Apps like Netflix, Hulu Plus and YouTube are also accessible from the TiVo guide.

For either option, you’ll need to put an antenna on your roof to better capture the local TV signals.

Ricoh Imaging’s new Theta camera takes a 360-degree photo for what the Denver company calls the “ultimate selfie.” Denver Post tech reporter stands next to Dan Savoie, Ricoh’s Product Marketing Manager for Canada. He placed the Theta on top of a shelf at Ricoh’s booth at the Consumer Electronics Show. Can you spot it?

The Theta: Not your grandmama’s camera

You may be familiar with the brand Ricoh, especially if you work in an office with giant, beige copy machines. But the company began branching into consumer products a few years ago after acquiring Pentax, the camera company in 2011.

While Ricoh is headquartered in Japan, its U.S. imaging unit, called Ricoh Imaging, is right in downtown Denver, having moved to 17th and California after picking up Pentax, which was at the time based in Golden. It employs about 30 people here.

It’s been a bumpy road, admitted Jim Malcolm, president of Ricoh Imaging. Pentax transitioned slowly from film to digital. And while it always offered digital cameras like its competitors, those new products came out about six months after everyone.

“Pentax played catch up all the time. But we never had to apologize,” because the delay helped work the kinks out of the products, he said. “Pentax has a lot of value as a brand. Converting it to a product was the challenge.”

But Ricoh may finally be on to something. At the end of 2014, Ricoh Imaging launched its new products, including the KS-1, which is aimed at Millennials who want to take their smartphone photos to a new level. It also added a new sporty camera called the WG-M1, a squarish, waterproof camera with a screen that can be mounted.

The Theta camera from Ricoh Imaging takes a 360-degree photo to get your self every photo. Ricoh’s president Jim Malcolm demonstrates, showing the photo I thought I took of myself. But it actually starts with Ricoh’s PR manager Sarah Schachterle. Thumb around and you’ll see the 360-degree shot.

And to really go after the younger market, it launched the Theta, which looks like remote control with a mysterious eye on both sides. The camera lens captures photos from 360-degrees so if you hold it up and push the button, you will have taken a photo as far as the camera can see in every direction. No more cramming all your friends into a selfie!

It then stitches the two sides together so when you see the entire image, the camera is actually not in the photo because it couldn’t take a photo of itself. Using the Theta mobile app, you can use your finger to see the whole image and tweak it to just show a portion. The link is sharable on Facebook and other social networking sites.

Screenshot from the Mountain View Telegraph website shows the hackers may have gotten to the site, but the paywall still lives.

INFIDELS, NEW YEAR WILL MAKE YOU SUFFER … after this brief survey.

The tiny Mountain View Telegraph — a newspaper from a town about 30 miles east of Albuquerque — had their website hacked today by a group that seems to support the Islamic State.

Headlines were replaced with the bold “INFIDELS, NEW YEAR WILL MAKE YOU SUFFER.” But despite all their skills and swagger, the group apparently could not defeat the almighty newspaper paywall. In order to see the article, visitors still have to answer a Google survey about readership habits.

A new 3D printer named the MOD-t is heading to its first customers in May, with the plan on bringing this minimalist beauty to market for “sub $400,” the company said at the Consumer Electronics Show, which opens today in Las Vegas.

New Matter’s printer is covered in a clear plexiglass-like material to protect the object getting printed — and little hands from touching before it’s ready. Because the top is window-clear, you can watch the MOD-t do its thing from any angle.

3D-printed lion head by the MOD-t. Roar!

It’s plug-and-play, has built-in Wi-Fi, has selectable layer resolution between 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 and 0.4 mm. It prints up to speeds of up to 80 mm per second. And the output? An object between 6x4x5 inches. Lots more details about the printer HERE.

The MOD-t got its start crowdfunding on Indiegogo, where it raised $683,804 last July. The company is based in Pasadena, Ca. You can sign up to get updates on the printer’s ETA on NewMatter.com.

Dr. Michio Kaku, a physicist, introduced the Toyota’s new hydrogen-fuel cell Mirai. He said he learned about it from a press release.

When Jeff Joseph, the Consumer Electronics Association’s senior vice president of communications and strategic relationships, told me automobiles were going to big at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, I didn’t think too much of it. After all, the show has long been a home for many auto companies, albeit auto accessories like speakers, navigation systems and other in-car tech.

Then Toyota showed off its first hydrogen-powered fuel-cell car, the Mirai. And it mentioned some impressive features: it gets 300 miles on one fuel up, accelerates to 60 mph in 9 seconds and its exhaust is “so clean you can almost drink it.” Plus, it takes just 3 to 5 minutes to refuel instead of hours like an electric car.

The other cool demo during Toyota’s press conference was all the lights went out. And Toyota’s senior vice president Bob Carter plugged a hose from the car to a make-shift house for additional power. He said the Mirai’s battery could keep a small house powered for days — with no pollution. So if you’re snowed in, you can keep the garage door closed.

You’ll need to fuel up at a hydrogen station and the company is working on that. Toyota is helping fund a few dozen stations around the nation.

The automaker said it plans to sell 700 Mirai’s this year and “tens of thousands by 2020.” To speed up consumer adoption, Toyota announced it will open its 5,680 hydrogen patents — including patents for hydrogen refueling stations — royalty free to the industry. Expect the first car to go on sale this fall with prices around $50,000.

Tamara Chuang covers personal technology and local tech news for The Denver Post. She previously spent 10 years doing the same thing for The Orange County Register before taking a hiatus to move here and become a SAHM to a precocious toddler.

Laura Keeney is a business reporter with The Denver Post, covering aerospace, aviation and biotech. Over the last two decades, she's covered everything from agribusiness to punk rock. Keeney holds an AACSB-accredited MBA from St. John Fisher College in Rochester, NY.